Twelve focus groups were conducted between May 2005 to April 2006 in six local authorities in the North West, the West Midlands and London which had higher than average numbers of minority ethnic teachers. Forty-nine teachers took part of whom 33 were African Caribbean, three Bangladeshi, seven Indian and six were Pakistani. Five teachers opted for in-depth, face-to-face interviews. All participants were qualified teachers who were working in maintained schools or local authorityschool support services. Fourteen teachers were from London, 14 from the North West and 21 teachers were from the West Midlands. The focus group discussions were transcribed and analysed with the aid of Atlas ti (computer assisted qualitative data analysis software for social scientists). As with other qualitative research, our conclusions are limited to the contributions of the 49 participants and we have not sought to make generalisations about teachers’ experiences.